Next near West Palm waterfront: ideas sprout for vacant city-owned sites

Andrew Abramson

Friday

Feb 26, 2010 at 12:01 AMMar 31, 2012 at 9:11 PM

It's a developer's dream — two vacant sites next to a revitalized waterfront, with a mayor ready to build.

The challenge now, for Mayor Lois Frankel and city consultant Lansing Melbourne Group, is gauging public sentiment.

The old city hall, on the east side of Olive Avenue, has stood vacant since last April, when the government moved into its new City Center digs off Dixie Highway. A vacant lot on the old city hall's east side, where the Helen Wilkes Hotel once stood, was acquired by the city's community redevelopment agency last year for $6 million.

The two sites combined create opportunities for the city. Among the ideas voiced at two public workshops last week: a hotel, a science museum, cultural center or recreation center.

The tallest hurdle is a 14-year-old vote by the public to ban downtown buildings of five stories from rising east of Olive Avenue. The restriction would have to be lifted to realize the mayor's hopes for a 15-story hotel .

"It is truly a singular, world-class site," said Peter Flotz, general manager of the Lansing Melbourne Group, who visited West Palm Beach to present scenarios for the two sites.

"I really cautioned everyone at the city and everyone in the audience not to underestimate the real significance of this site and its location."

Flotz came armed with four scale models to show what the sites could look like. One showed two five-story buildings that took up most of the sites, which would fit without changing current height limits.

Another model showed two slimmer 15-story towers, surrounded by green space. Double towers are an unlikely scenario, though, since Frankel has expressed interest in building one 15-story hotel on the old city hall site with a cultural building in front of the Helen Wilkes site.

Along those lines, she recently raised the idea of the city donating the Wilkes site to steer a new, improved South Florida Science Museum there from Dreher Park.

County Commissioner Jeff Koons doubted the museum could raise the $40 million he estimated it would take to build itself a new home downtown. Besides, he noted, the science museum is already at work, with county funding, on a 12,000-square-foot exhibit space just east of the museum that would complement the museum at its current site.

City officials and public members attending the workshops suggested other ideas for the Helen Wilkes site, including a children's museum and a learning center. City Commissioner Molly Douglas suggested a family recreational center with a skating rink, ski slope or ferris wheel.

Building a 15-story hotel with a smaller structure in front of it would allow hotel guests to enjoy waterfront vistas while providing the city with a cultural element, in the mayor's view. The 250-room hotel would be tall and narrow to incorporate green space and preserve the waterfront theme, in that scenario.

West Palm Beach resident Al Vazquez, who attended a workshop, said he's in favor of a 15-story hotel, but only if the voters allow it.

"Everyone knows there's a lack of hotel rooms and this is as good a place as any," Vazquez said. "My only beef is that the voters voted to limit the height of everything east of Olive. In my opinion, it's really only the voters that can say otherwise."

Kim Briesemeister, community redevelopment executive director, left open the possibility that the commission could change the height restriction on its own, but said public support would be important. "Whether it requires a referendum or not, that's a legal and planning question," she said. "We need to know what the public's sentiment is on the height."

Jeannene Cox, a downtown resident who attended the workshop, said the city needs the 15-story hotel, no matter how it happens. "You have the water view right there, and the bottom line is you need to generate the economy," Cox said.

Flotz said the city needs to make a decision in the next six months so it can begin working with hoteliers.

The city will need to have some involvement in funding the project, because of the difficulties obtaining private financing in the current market, he added.

Commissioner Bill Moss said he's against using public money for the hotel, although he could see the city giving an hotelier a good deal on the site. But Moss said that commissioners and the mayor have agreed to use the money made on the sale of the old city hall site to fund neighborhood projects.

Flotz said he expects a lot of interest from hoteliers.

"Very few, if any, waterfront sites in an urban area have this magnitude of land put together, this level of public investment already there," Flotz said.

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